EDIT: tldr - I was having issues creating a VM using Virtual Machine Manager on Bazzite Linux. Several responders chimed in that it’s likely because I’m using the flatpak version of VMM. I probably still could make it work on Bazzite somehow, perhaps w/ the help of distrobox, but instead I’ve fired up a VM on an old laptop running Linux Mint and everything is smooth sailing. Thanks to all who took some time to help me find a solution.

Original body:

Background: I’m looking to set up a virtual Debian server using Virtual Machine Manager, but I’m stuck on creating my first VM. I’m running Bazzite on my host machine if that makes any difference.

Steps to Reproduce the Issue:

  1. Launch Virtual Machine Manager.
  2. Click File > New Virtual Machine, which opens the “New VM - Step 1” window.
  3. Select “Local install media” and click Forward, which brings me to “New VM - Step 2.”
  4. Click “Browse…” which opens the “Locate ISO media volume” window:
  5. Click “Browse Local,” which opens the file browser.
  6. Choose ISO file (in my case, I’m using debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso) and click Select, which returns me to the “New VM - Step 2” window.
  7. Because the OS is not detected automatically, I uncheck the “Automatically detect from the installation media / source” checkbox, start typing the word “debian” in the text box above it, and select Debian 12 from the pop-up selection menu.
  8. Click Forward.

Actual behavior:

Input Error - Error setting installer parameters. Validating install media ‘/run/user/1000/doc/c0a3c3fc/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso’ failed. Could not start storage pool: cannot open directory ‘/run/usr/1000/doc/c0a3c3fc’: Permission denied.

Expected behavior: Create the VM and boot into the ISO that I selected in previous steps.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

  • yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    Thanks - this got me past the original issue. What I did is I opened up Flatseal and granted access to all system files for Virtual Machine Manager.

    However, now I’m stuck at a different point. I can get past where I choose how much memory, CPU, and disk storage to allocate, but when I get to Step 5 and click Finish,

    This happens:

    Unable to complete install: 'internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: 2025-06-22T17:16:36.091623Z qemu-system-x86_64: -blockdev {"driver":"file","filename":"/run/media/myusername/path/to/installers/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso","node-name":"libvirt-1-storage","read-only":true}: Could not open '/run/media/myusername/path/to/installers/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso': Permission denied'

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtManager/asyncjob.py", line 71, in cb_wrapper
    callback(asyncjob, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtManager/createvm.py", line 2008, in _do_async_install
    installer.start_install(guest, meter=meter)
  File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtinst/install/installer.py", line 726, in start_install
    domain = self._create_guest(
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/app/share/virt-manager/virtinst/install/installer.py", line 667, in _create_guest
    domain = self.conn.createXML(initial_xml or final_xml, 0)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/app/lib/python3.12/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 4590, in createXML
    raise libvirtError('virDomainCreateXML() failed')
libvirt.libvirtError: internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: 2025-06-22T17:16:36.091623Z qemu-system-x86_64: -blockdev {"driver":"file","filename":"/run/media/myusername/path/to/installers/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso","node-name":"libvirt-1-storage","read-only":true}: Could not open '/run/media/myusername/path/to/installers/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso': Permission denied

    This message is talking about permission denied, so I checked the file permissions, and I saw that the ISO file is owned by the qemu user:

    myusername@fedora:~$ ls -la /run/media/myusername/path/to/installers
total 101472336
drwxr-xr-x. 2 myusername myusername       4096 Jun 16 14:47  .
drwxr-xr-x. 6 myusername myusername      12288 Jul 29  2024  ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 myusername myusername 7547453440 Oct 17  2024  bazzite-gnome-stable.iso
-rw-r--r--. 1 qemu       qemu        702545920 Jun 12 17:00  debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso

    I changed it to myusername:

    sudo chown myusername:myusername /run/media/myusername/path/to/installers/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso

    When I tried the same steps again, I got stuck in the same place and rerunning ls showed that the ISO file’s ownership has reverted back to qemu.

    Any ideas?

    • ormith@lemmy.world
      2·
      3 days ago

      No idea. Since the path is a /run/media one, what’s the filesystem used there? Perhaps it’s incompatible. Have you tried putting the iso in your home directory and going from there instead?

      But perhaps it would work best if you just do what the documentation tells you not to do and rpm-ostree install virt-manager (and libvirt and friends, if needed)